Basic
Home Recording ©2003 by Jim Goodman. All rights reserved. It is always important to begin with the end in mind. It sets reasonable expectations, it will keep you from becoming frustrated with the whole process by helping you make the right decisions on education, equipment purchases and when you need to get help.
To begin we will ask the fundamental questions: What do you want to record and why?
And do you have the experience and equipment to do it?
If the goal is to do a CD you want to sell commercially then you will need to have the professional experience and the gear to do that, and face it if you had that kind of experience you wouldn’t be reading this for anything but to admit you have too much time on your hands. And if you are starting from scratch it will be cheaper and less painful to book a project studio in your town. That is until you acquire all that you will need in education, experience and equipment, which is outside the scope of this series.
Yet others only want to have a sketchpad for ideas, where they can experiment with how a song sounds back or with different instruments and this anyone really can do with just a basic understanding of recording and simple knowledge of technologies and really very little gear.
Realistically most folks really want to have a good representation of their music for demo or for sale at concerts, at church or to be a pre-production prior to entering a studio, which you can do with moderate experience and some gear.
For this series we are beginning with this end in mind, making a good representation of our music (aka demo) beginning with no experience and no gear. So now we pursue getting there.
In the next installment will cover the recording platforms, stand-alone and pc daws. Don’t know those terms? You will.
The first decision we have to make after beginning with the end in mind is the recording medium. We have a decision to make; do we want to record several tracks at once or just multi-track using overdubs? Then we ask ourselves do we want to be able to take it with us or will it be left in an area we designate as our studio?
Lets look at the basic choices. First for the majority of all recording you should have available at least 2 mono tracks or 1 stereo track that can have each channel (L-R) as an independent in. This gives you 2 simultaneous track recording. Perfect for stereo micing guitar or recording 2 singers (will be discussed later).
If you are looking to record a full drum set or a band live you would need to consider enough inputs to capture all available mics independently so as to have flexible control over the mix. You can achieve a good recording of a drum set with 2 mics creatively placed and we will see that later as well when we get to micing and recording.
For our purpose of making a decent demo and really to stay with in a budget we will get by with needing only 2 independent inputs and they ought to be XLR for microphones with phono jacks as an option for plugging in guitar to record direct or other options ie a drum machine, etc. For those that use midi sequencers and such you will also need to consider midi i/o, playback and timing, which beyond the scope of this series.
Next we consider the second question and that is do we want to take it with us or are we looking to have a studio space. The 2 choices we will consider is Standalone or PC. Lets first get a term out of the way. You will hear the word DAW that is an acronym for digital audio workstation. This term can be applied to both standalone and pc recorders.
Standalone refers to what will be referred to as portable. These are self-contained units that give you not only recording ability, but also effects, mixdown and even mastering tools. Many have built-in hard drives and CD Burners or Zip disks. Most all available options have the ability to connect to an external CD burner or other Mixdown device.
PC would refer to your computer. Generally this is not
considered portable, but no doubt it can be. With a pc you can have a wider variety
of options, effects, mastering and mixing tools. With a PC we have many more
considerations to make and we will discuss that in the PC specific installment.
In the next installments we will look at the platforms specifically. The immediate installment will be on Stand-alone recorders, both Cassette and DAW. Then following we will look at PC based DAWs. If you have any questions or if something isn’t clear please feel free to reply back and I will clarify.
As we start looking at equipment we have to remember beginning with the end in mind. Do we want to produce a commercial grade CD, a simple project demo or a scratchpad for ideas. This is really important because there are a variety of options out there for recording platforms and media. For the sake of space and since we are just looking at the absolute basics we will touch on standalone and pc recording platforms in basic generic terms. This installment is on standalone systems. The 2 basic types of standalones we will look at are cassette and Digital Audio Workstations (DAW).
The original and most popular standalone for multi-track home recording is the cassette multi-track deck. You may hear these referred to a port-a-studios. These are the simplest of all of the units mainly because most folks are aware of how a cassette deck works and are not intimidated by the technology. There are simple units that can record 2 to 8 simultaneous tracks onto a 1/8” inch cassette tape. It is kind of cliché’ to say this, but the Beatles Sgt. Peppers album was recorded on a tape 4-tracker, as were many other albums. Granted the media and equipment was different, but the reality is the concept and how it works is the same. These cassette port-a-studios are easy to use and were the choice of many songwriters because of the price, anywhere from $99 to $600. The biggest drawback to these units was their track limitations and the noise that tape generates naturally. Some of the higher end decks addressed these issues with Dolby and double speed recording and have built in mixers.
The second option is the DAW. These units are the next generation of port-a-studios. These DAWs offer much more flexibility than there cassette ancestors. Prices range from $200 to $2500. The biggest benefit is the digital format. Much more quiet, midi capable, onboard effects processors. The only real drawback to these units is the technology is evolving so fast that these units sometimes are built and shipped with technological flaws causing intermittent lock ups and sometimes loss of data. When you get into the higher end units and then studio grade units they have computer interfaces that will allow for downloadable firmware updates to address issues. The cheaper units usually need to be sent in for firmware updates at the factory. In this arena you really get what you pay for.Next installment PC recording platform.
Recording on the home PC is the ultimate value for the buck. With a pc you can record as many tracks as your system can handle. And in a dollar for dollar comparison, you can get more simultaneous input and out put tracks with a soundcard and breakout box combination (to be discussed later) than with a standalone DAW. There is a caveat to pc recording and that is in the pc itself.
Every recording (pro audio) application and pro audio hardware will have certain system requirements. It is important before purchasing or downloading demo software that you seek out these requirements on the manufactures website and make sure your system is compatible. Always check user forums and support FAQ and issues pages. You can also e-mail the support department with your pc specs and ask them about any known issues. Most new to pc recording users would avoid numerous frustrations if they just followed this advice. Honestly I wish I would have known that before I started in pc recording, I wouldn’t have wasted so much money and time.
What you need to use for pc recording is a pc, a soundcard, an audio recording application (anyone’s Window’s computer not have Sound Recorder?), an input device i.e. a microphone and output device i.e. speakers. Since almost everyone reading this has a pc you can see the value in pc recording especially when starting out in home recording. The benefit here is you can learn how to use what you have before making any purchases, thus giving you the added knowledge and experience needed to make good decisions.
Here is some basic information you should know about your pc before doing anything else at this point: (OLD ALERT)
Get the most you can afford - and the most memory. Rather get more memory than more processor speed.
Get on your pc manufactures website and obtain the specs for your computer if you do not know this info. Most all computers will have a user and upgrade guide either in hardcopy or on your system somewhere. Find it or download it and get to know your pc. This will be important to you as we move forward in this series.
In the next installment we will look at simple desktop stereo (2-channel 1 track) audio recording using the absolute basics to get a baseline understanding of how it all works.
All Windows PCs come with a simple .wav recorder called Sound Recorder. Sound Recorder is an extremely limited utility that was designed to allow Windows users to make their own .wav files to use on their PC to customize their desktop sounds amongst many other programs and uses. When you see .wav this is referring to the file extension of waveform files or simple uncompressed audio files.
To use Sound Recorder simply refer to the help files within the program itself. There is a length limit to Sound Recorder recordings in Win95/98/98se and the default record time on other Windows platforms is 60seconds, but you can add more time by creating and inserting blank .wav files to make 5 minutes or longer, but only in 60 second increments. Definitely a pain, but it is free. Here is a Microsoft Knowledge Base article on how to add time to Sound Recorder, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;82215 .
Fortunately there are more flexible alternatives available on the net, as shareware and/or freeware that can help you make better and easier recordings.
A freeware program that is out there is called Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net . It is an open source project that seems to be gaining popularity. I have not used this program, but from all appearances it does seem to be an interesting prospect.
There is a huge variety of software recorders available, some commercial, some shareware and some freeware. The adage you get what you pay for does apply here. A commercially produced program generally will have been tested on a variety of configurations and would have generally better support, but not always.
Also most programs come with help files and tutorials. Spend sometime familiarizing yourself with these valuable guides and if there is a tutorial go thru it as it will payoff in the long run. I can’t say enough about support pages and user forums – these are often your best places to get the low down on software and finding help from people who are using the programs.
Recording Quality
For some programs, like Sound Recorder they express quality in terms of how you want the audio to sound.
Open up Sound Recorder select file, properties. You will have a detail tab, below that tab you will see format conversion and by default it displays All Formats in the Choose Format drop-down box. Your choices here is All Formats, Playback Formats, and Recording Formats. Leave All Formats in the box and press the convert now button.
Now you will see another set of drop down boxes. Under Name you will have some common names for selected audio quality types. Telephone Quality (sounds like you are on a telephone), Radio Quality (more like AM radio), CD Quality (the best quality). Within these quality types there are a variety of bit-rates and bit-depth.
Below that you will see Format and Attribute drop-down boxes. These are important to understand as you begin audio recording. If spend a few moments browsing the selections you will see a wide variety of choices. Simple put there are a wide variety of audio applications and different formats and related attributes produce differing signal-to-noise ratio settings. At this point feel free to stop and plug a mic into your sound card “mic in” and record a 10-20 second clip and experiment with these different settings. Make your last recording at CD Quality and hear the difference.
Since we are dealing with music audio we will look at PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) only. PCM is the uncompressed method to represent audio in a digital format. CDs operate at 44.1Khz at 16 bit depth, stereo with an audio data rate of 172 Kb/s. This setting no matter what program you use will produce a CD quality recording. In fact if you record at higher setting you have to convert that audio to 44.1/16 before you can make an audio CD for your CD player. You can use lesser or greater settings for internet audio, but not for a CD you can play in your player. This is also important if you plan on sharing your files for collaborations using differing software and hardware platforms.
Here is a great chart for reference, if you are like me and
record music as well as spoken voice for a variety of formats,
http://www.usbpre.com/datarates.htm#pcm
.
If you don’t quite understand these basic concepts, I do recommend you visit your local library or bookstore and obtain a book on digital audio recording. I would also make sure you look at a book that has an edition or revision of no earlier than 2002. The basic standards haven’t changed but many other important details and useful features in the books may have as technology changes so rapidly.
If you are new to recording you may have found the 2 channel 1 track stereo recording of the last installment very lacking in flexibility. It is possible and actually likely that some may have found it adequate for what they are recording. In all honesty I do a lot of 1 track recording in a simple .wav editor, but when I am wanting to work on a song, ie arrangements, different instrument sounds etc, I use multitracking.
Multitrack simply is as the word describes multiple tracks. In stereo recording you have 2 channels, left and right. So what if you could take those 2 channels and make those useable as 2 inputs, the left channel being input named L and the right channel being a second input named R? Well then a 2 channel stereo recording could be made 2 track if you can recording the left channel as 1 input, play it back (monitoring) so you can then record over it on the right channel with the right input giving 2 independent tracks to record with. Practically lets say you record your guitar on 1 channel called track 1 and your vocal on the right, track 2. This can be expanded to 4 tracks, 8 tracks, 128 tracks what ever your software will support all using the left/right inputs from your soundcard. Just for clarification your jack into your soundcard is a stereo jack, so the software will identify each channel as an input.
As you no doubt gathered from the above you can only record 2 simultaneous inputs at once ie for either 1 track stereo or 2 tracks mono. There are a variety of items to allow for multiple inputs made up of left/right inputs to allow for as many simultaneous tracks as you would need. Example if you are recording a drum set you may want a track for each of the following mics: kick drum, snare, hi-hat, 2 for high toms, 2 overhead for cymbals, and one on the floor tom. Here you would have 7 mics and you could mix them down with a mixer to stereo and record them to a stereo track or 2 mono tracks, or you could have amazing flexibility with each mic having its own track, in this case you would need 7 tracks. To do this would require a supporting soundcard, breakout box (multi inputs) and software to support the number of tracks.
Back to the 2 track recording. If you followed the example above with the guitar being 1 track and the vocal being number 2 you will notice upon playback each track will have its own speaker, you could change the 2 tracks to mono as most programs allow for stereo-to-mono conversion, but what if the guitar is louder that the vocals or vise-versa? Then the next tool in multitrack recording is the mixer.
The mixer is a part of that process allowing you to mix the levels of each track for either a “mixdown” or to apply to the stereo-to-mono conversion. It can be a mixer that resembles a real mixer or it can be as simple as a left to right slider. If your program supports 2 independent track recording it should also have the ability to mix the 2 mono tracks.
You may have also notice or assumed the guitar and vocal lack dynamics or sound to harsh. You can also add effects to each. track. Lets say the guitar sounds like you are playing in a tin can, you can apply an EQ effect to the track and increase the bass frequencies. Perhaps the vocals sound too in your face you can apply a reverb effect to your vocals to add some space to allow the vocal to “sit in the mix”.
So you can see there is great flexibility to really make your recording sound good. With the right tools and education you can actually make your recording sound very professional.
In the next installment we will look at software and I will post some links to some free software and demo software. This is where we roll up our sleeves and have some real fun as many of these have downloadable demos you can mix and apply effects to. I find you can read about it all day long, but playing with it that is the best learning.